A Dictionary in Progress
by Ocean of Ashes
Summary: A companion piece of sorts to "Greatness". Alicia reflects on how the person she is measures up against the person she wants to be.


Author's Note: It didn't seem complete just having a piece from Will's perspective so here is something from Alicia's to even up the balance. For some obscure reason, I seem to be able to nail male characters' voices better than female ones as a rule, but this has sort of turned out as I envisaged it so I hope you like.

Disclaimer: Written for neither profit nor glory, just a bit of fun.

Rating: T

_A Dictionary in Progress_

You are a mother and a wife. You are Peter Florrick's wife. It is how you've defined yourself for so long that when you go to look in the dictionary the day he tells you what he's done, there is no other definition.

You have spent the last fifteen years of your life looking at him adoringly and bringing up his children. You bite your tongue when his mother tries to tell you she knows best, and smile sweetly when you want to scream and shout. You charm the sharks that can help him climb to the top of the pile in this cutthroat city and you always have dinner ready for him no matter what time he comes home from work.

He always says fish pie is his favourite and now you know what gave him the appetite for it you haven't cooked it since.

You hold his hand and face the cameras with him because you don't know what else to do except be Peter Florrick's wife. The flashes give you a migraine. You're pretty sure there's a part of you, somewhere really deep inside, that wants to throw his clothes out the window and his sorry, cheating ass out on the street, but you can't find it. You imagine Zach and Grace's expressions and you know you can't do it to them. He is their father after all, and somehow you make it okay that he threw away everything you had worked for fifteen years to build together to suck the toes of some empty headed, stupid little girl playing at grown ups.

You can't bring yourself to leave him, but you can re-write the dictionary. You _know _there's something more to you than the person you've become. You _know _there used to be some way of defining yourself before you were married.

At Georgetown, you weren't married. At Georgetown, you used to define yourself in terms of the debates you won and the praise you gained. By the photos on your noticeboard and the hangings on your wall. By your friends. By Will.

You meet him really early on, when he asks to share your notes in the library one afternoon and he's not like any guy you've ever encountered before; he's funny and charming and knows so much about so much. He shines out, head and shoulders above the rest of the class, and you know he's going to be great one day. You think he already is. You agree – and disagree – about so many things, and you get on better with him than any of the girls you've met so far. He makes the driest contract law sound like fun, and he's the perfect intellectual foil for you. You just bounce off each other.

You fall for him so fast and so hard that you're in way over your head before you've even realised you're in trouble.

There is a procession of girls that prance through his life, but you never really have to compete with them. They are all pretty and most are silly, but you don't meet the same one twice so it doesn't matter whether you like them or not. When you're still in dorms, he leaves them in his room and comes to you with coffee and cinnamon bagels, and laughs when you tell him he's being cruel.

You never tell him it's you he's being cruel to. Sometimes you'll be sitting next to him on the sofa, watching a movie in the dark, and you can feel the heat of his body and you want him so much you can't breathe. You'll be arguing over some obscure piece of case law and his eyes will flash with passion over the work and it lets you fool yourself it's passion for you and it makes you dizzy.

You know it's never going to happen. You love him too much to be able to lose him by bringing things out in the open, so you convince yourself that this half life is so much better than taking the risk. Peter comes in and sweeps you off your feet at just the right moment.

Or the wrong moment, because the morning after he stays over for the first time you see the flash of jealousy in Will's eyes. It builds up for a week before you have a massive argument and this time you don't mistake the cause of his passion. The next day, you still can't make the leap, so you tell him Peter's the real thing and after a split second when he looks at you as if the world has coming crashing down around him, the shutters come down and he doesn't fight you on it.

All you know is that if being Peter Florrick's wife doesn't make sense to you anymore, you have to go back to something that does. Law was always the easy bit for you, so that's where you start. With fifteen years away and the scandal splashed all over the headlines, you know you're not the most attractive prospect to an employer. Will offers you a job before you've even finished asking the question.

It makes you nervous. Georgetown was a long time ago and while you wouldn't say you're indifferent to Will now he's certainly been put on the back shelf of dimly regretted missed opportunity that a happy marriage has rendered it unnecessary to visit. But all the rules have changed now.

You don't mention what happened and he seems to take his lead from you, for which you are grateful. You really, really need him to be your friend right now, and he is. He's fantastic. And if sometimes he looks at you in a way you haven't been looked at in a long time, well… He's clever enough, and knows you well enough, to know not to act on it.

You need him not to act on it. And yet, at the same time, there's a little part of you that really wants him to fight for you this time.

You're not naïve. You know what Peter has had to do to get ahead, and for Will to have become a managing partner at one of Chicago's premier law firms at his age, the story can't be that different, but you still see the vestiges of the boy you knew at Georgetown.

You never see it more clearly than when you walk into his office, late and dark. He finishes his call to Patty and stares fixedly at a point on the wall opposite.

'I blew it.'

He sounds so tired, so defeated, and you can't leave him like that. This wasn't his fault, and the best friend in you needs to make him see that.

'No, Jesse blew it, and he knows it,' you say, trying to make him believe it. In himself.

He looks down at his hands and you can see the despair etched into his features. You try to remember when you last saw him like that but you can't. Among the many thousands of things you hold in your head about him, this is not one of them.

'No, the woman's right. I played craps with a kid's life.'

You put your coat and bag down on the table and without thinking, put your hand on his shoulder. He feels cold, and there is a tightly wound tension in his muscles that you long to ease.

'Will, you listen. I know you did _everything._' You try to convey just how much you believe in him, and have believed in him all these years. Just because he hasn't done the great things he dreamed of, it doesn't mean he isn't great. To you, he'll always be great.

You know before his eyes reach yours what you are going to see there, and you know before he puts one hand, and then the other, to your cheek, and stands up, that he's going to kiss you.

What you don't know, when he does, is how you're ever going to stop. You expect him to taste of doubt, either his or yours, but all there is is coffee and desperation and coming home. It's like coming home.

He stops too soon, and he starts to ask you if you're making a mistake, but you cut him off. If you think, you'll stop, and if you stop, you'll die. A moan slips out from the depths of your throat and you press your whole body against his, remembering how well you fit. His kiss is hot and hard, and he dips his head to the side to try to get even closer to you. For a moment, you're both fearless. You're twenty three and the whole world can come and have a go if it thinks it's hard enough, because you're the best. Together, you and Will are the best. That's the way it was at Georgetown and in that kiss you feel as if it could be again.

But not yet. You don't want to be defined as Peter Florrick's wife anymore, but nor do you want the dictionary to read Will Gardner's mistress either.

You know now. You want it to say, _Alicia: Mother and Lawyer. _You're not there yet, but it's just about pencilled in and one day, you hope to be able to mark it up in ink. You're never going to let yourself be defined by a man again, certainly not by Peter and not even by Will.

Though you wouldn't mind if your name appears next to his. Eventually.


End file.
